• Bobby The Soulful Pianist/Vocalist
• Bobby The Entertainer
• Bobby The Educator

Bobby The Soulful Pianist/Vocalist

I love playing the piano. If you really want to know what music engages me the most, it is Jazz.  Blues taps my soul the best. My versatility allows me to play popular and R & B as well. With every piece, I practice until I actually feel the feeling and like it. If I play it, I have to like it. My pianist training is from E. Vallalee Piano School-Yonkers, NY, Meheegan Jazz Studies, and years of self-instruction mixed with the raw experience of performing. My music is influenced by many Jazz Artists I have encountered over the years. All of them have something to offer, but the main influences are Oscar Peterson, Barry Harris, Roland Kirk, Jaki Byard, Junior Mance, and of course, Thelonius Monk.

In Blues music, I enjoy Muddy Waters, Jimmy reed, and naturally, B.B. King. Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, and Fats Waller head the list of legends I am indebted to for much of my lounge work. I also like Fats Domino and Louis Jordan for the New Orleans Jazz element that a lot of people seem to love. Add Ray Charles, Billy Joel, Elton John, and a variety of R&B performers, including the Motown Era, and you have more or less a good picture of what I do.

Let’s not forget Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and the entire history of swing and big band music. People often dance to my music because of the rhythm. I think the years I spent playing rehearsals in Community and Regional Professional Theater, providing music for large dance productions with piano alone enhanced my sense of rhythm.

People tell me they like me because I have a "groove" to my music, a flow, a genuine, good rhythm.  They like the clarity, the dexterity, the soulfulness in the voice and in the piano playing, no matter what style of music I am playing or singing. 

Over the years, the requests for vocals outmatched the requests for instrumentals. Always sensitive to the need for people to enjoy themselves and what they hear, I have accommodated and developed a singing style that seems to touch people in unexpected ways. 

Bobby The Entertainer

As an entertainer, I try to make everyone in the room feel at home.  I aim to communicate, be humorous, personable, and informed. I am not flashy or outspoken.  I let the music do the entertaining, for I feel it is my best suit.

Here are just some songs that I have played and sang around the world:

Bobby The Educator

I like teaching. It allows me to give something back. I have had many personal students over the years and taught at three community based Schools in Syracuse, NY. Salt City Center for the Performing Arts, Metropolitan School of Music, and the Paul Robeson Performing Arts School.

Basically I teach the student how to teach himself. Knowledge is available everywhere you look. Internalizing that knowledge is up to the student. Practice is key. One must practice long hours just to remove outside interferences that distract the brain and compromise its value as a perfect learning tool.

If you are willing to learn, and need to have knowledge, you will benefit greatly from the teaching materials I am currently developing that focus on the ability of the brain to self-instruct.

The tools for learning are built in. I just help to bring them out. I teach a simplified approach to Jazz Harmony. Current methods are too complicated and make too much out of a music form that is best suited for the ear rather than the eyes.